Welcome to 2016

Welcome to 2016, the year after the Back to the Future future. What’s in it for business IT? What are the trends and issues that we are facing, what are the benefits brought by the latest technology?

I’m still firmly convinced that the migration to the cloud will continue. For the startup it’s the quickest way to corporate quality tools for your business – only need a couple of email addresses, then why pay for a server that will handle hundreds? Use a cloud provider that scales all the way up but only charges for what you use. Online collaboration is becoming the norm, cloud computing allows this to come to the fore – use Google Hangouts or Skype to make that transatlantic call – or a local one.

Storage is still the weak point of cloud computing – it’s a matter of how fast you can get that information up there, or back down. One option is to use online tools to create those documents, then nothing needs to be downloaded. With larger files, such as images or video, then it may be that a local cached storage device will give you the best of both worlds. Remember that cloud providers have a much better chance of keeping your data safe than you do.

At the other end of the scale cloud computing can provide cost and management savings by doing away with the endless hardware upgrade cycle – management, backup, disaster recovery all becomes much more simple, and easy to budget for with monthly payments according to user count.

Whatever the size of your company, what do you think are the benefits of cloud computing?